Environment
- Environment
Pesticides can have long-term impact on bumblebee learning
Pesticide-laced nectar and pollen can permanently harm the brains of baby bumblebees.
- Materials Science
This ‘living’ concrete slurps up a greenhouse gas
Microbes help harden a mix of sand and gelatin into a living concrete that could interact with people and the environment in great new ways.
- Physics
Explainer: Rainbows, fogbows and their eerie cousins
Light shining through a water droplet can make more than just a rainbow. A range of other colorful arcs also can develop.
- Health & Medicine
How to find the next pandemic virus before it finds us
Wild animals carry viruses that can sicken people. Monitoring those viral hosts that pose the greatest risk might help prevent a new pandemic.
- Climate
How to curb the climate heating by contrails
Contrails are narrow clouds left behind in the sky by jets. They add to climate change. But a new study suggests a way to curb their contribution.
- Tech
Here’s one way to harvest water right out of the air
Need water but you have no access to rain, lakes or groundwater? Materials known as metal-organic frameworks could be used to slurp that water from the air, new data show.
- Plants
Let’s learn about trees
These long-lived woody plants provide shade for people, homes for animals — and help protect the planet against climate change.
- Environment
Legos could last a disturbingly long time in the ocean
By looking at toys washed up on beaches, scientists have estimated how long it takes hard plastics to break down in the oceans. And it’s a long time.
- Environment
Laundry tweaks can help clothes last longer and pollute less
Clothes washed in cooler water and for less time shed less dye and fewer fibers, a new study finds. That’s better for clothes — and the environment.
- Environment
Greener than burial? Turning human bodies into worm food
Composting human bodies yielded good results — and good soil — in one small study. It could become an alternative to burial or cremation in one state.
- Animals
Conservation is going to the dogs
Scientists are now training dogs to help track rare, elusive — and sometimes invasive — plants and animals.
- Earth
Scientists Say: Meteorology
This word describes the study of processes in the Earth’s atmosphere, including the weather.
